Equine

The Winner

Included in the 2016 American Academy of Equine Art’s spring invitational exhibition.

I hadn’t painted Saddlebreds in a long time so I attended a show at the Minnesota Fairgrounds to study them and take photographs. I combined several of my references to create this proud head portrait. Tip: if you want to make sure your values are conveying good form and light, take a photo of the painting and convert it to gray scale. If it still works well minus all color, you’re good to go.

Early Morning at the Horse Show

Selected for the 2015/2016 Society of Animal Artists annual exhibition and national tour

The splashes of sunlight in the midst of deep shadow stopped me in my tracks as this Percheron was being bathed. Then the sprayer mist caught the sun just coming over the building. Magic! I took photos for reference but I also stood and stared, trying to commit to memory the values and colors in front of me that I would need if I’d have any chance of recreating this scene.

Window Watcher

Winner of The Kasper Foundation Equine Art Award at the 2005 American Academy of Equine Art juried show.Winner of Best In Show and the WRVAG Founder’s Award at the 2010 Wind River Valley Artist’s Guild 61st National Show.

This was the second equine painting I did after graduating from The Atelier. It was almost startling to me how much more accomplished this painting felt than any equine piece I had done before I found the school. Then the painting began to win awards which only confirmed I wasn’t imagining the improvement in my skills. I can’t thank this classic instruction enough for how it transformed my ability to see Nature and then paint it.

One Summer Evening

I attended a workshop on photographing horses. At day’s end, as the light turned golden, our horse and rider models rode to a large pond. Only Natalie took Daisy into the water. After several trips that went out further and deeper, there was a big splash and her high laughter as the pony went galloping back to the barn alone.

The Calling Mare

This bay Arabian mare was one of the Gamaar daughters owned by a couple I knew in Minnesota when I was first showing my art at local horse shows. I was welcomed to their home frequently and over the years have used a number of the photos I took of their beautiful horses as references for pastels and oils.

Waiting in the Wind

This painting was inspired by a slide I took many years ago at a friend’s farm. I loved the gentle reach of the horse’s head. I imagined the eyes were watching the house, hoping a favorite person might decide it was dinner time. The painting felt flat at first but I followed the advice of an artist I admire: if things aren’t working, try waking up the painting with some splashes of color. That worked and the painting sailed along to completion.

Nosy

Winner of The Sam Savitt Award at the 2006 American Academy of Equine Art juried show.Cover art on Horses In Art magazine, Spring, 2007.

This painting started with a small, poorly focused snapshot I took inside a barn aisle many years ago. The filly’s head was a blur because she moved just as I snapped the shutter and there was a person in the foreground blocking part of the aisle but I had to paint this scene about light and mood. I was particularly humbled that Nosy received the Sam Savitt Award from the AAEA show because he was a childhood horse artist hero of mine.

The Expectant Mothers

Winner of The Kasper Foundation Equine Art Award at the 2006 American Academy of Equine Art juried show.

Only the Arabian mare was pregnant when I took a series of afternoon photos at this farm. I know the woman wasn’t expecting but as I later worked on this piece, I thought how interesting it would be if she was pregnant but didn’t yet know it. And perhaps the mare already sensed their sisterhood. It became the story in my head that led to the title.

Sable and Silver

This painting had no photo reference but I designed it to have two things I love. One is the exuberance of horses at liberty in a pasture, particularly the young ones who find imaginative ways to cover ground. I also love subjects and scenes that are backlit. There can be such intensity when sun comes through hair or grass or leaves. Both the color and quality of the light changes.

A Distant Horn

Included in the Cross Gate Gallery 2007 Masters of Foxhounds Centennial Tour. Included in the 2010 American Academy of Equine Art’s spring invitational exhibition.

The original photograph that inspired this painting was of a stallion at liberty who turned when someone led a mare out of the barn across the pond. I was so taken with the unexpected image of his head facing opposite of his own body that I knew I had to paint it. But I added tack and decided that he was responding to the sound of a distant hunting horn.

Late Summer Sonata

It is remarkably gratifying to the artist when a painting you have done suddenly exerts such an emotional hold on a person that they can’t walk away. It happened with this white mare and the woman who has now given her a very loving home. It can be hard to part with a painting but not when you know it will be so cherished.

Mustang Mama

First Place, Oil, Professional Category at the Wind River Artists’ Guild 62nd Annual Show in Wyoming.

I hadn’t done a Western scene in a long time when I created this painting from my imagination and several photographs I had taken on a long-ago trip out west. I wanted to design a good rock formation up in the high country as a protective nursery for this very alert wild Mustang’s paint foal.